MR. GOSSE'S ESSAYS.*
WITH a light and practised pen Mr. Gosse touches in these essays on several topics of contemporary interest. With most of the articles readers of magazine literature may be already familiar. Not all can be strictly described as Questions at Issue ; but if, as Sir Henry Taylor once said, the success of a book is largely dependent on its title, the author may be congratulated on his choice. All the subjects selected for discussion are of a literary oharacter. Mr. Gosse writes of " The Tyranny of the Novel," of " The Influence of Democracy in Literature," of "The Limits of Realism in Fiction," and of " Making a Name in Literature." He asks, too, in three significant papers, whether verse is in danger, whether America has produced a poet, and what is a great poet P Then there is what the writer terms a Lucianic sketch, reprinted from the Fortnightly Review, in which it appeared anonymously ; two Pastels, as they are rather absurdly termed, descriptive of Mr. Stevenson as a poet and of Mr. Kipling as a relater of short stories ; a paper on "Symbolism and M. Afallarm6;" and "A Centenary Address delivered last 3 ear in praise of the ever-beloved and ethereally. illustrious Percy Bysshe Shelley." A book no varied in contents cannot be formally criticised. It will suffice to refer to a few salient points upon which we agree or disagree with its author.
We are glad to see that Mr. Gosse makes a bold protest against the folly, now so much in vogue, of talking about prose-poetry. Justly does he say that it is "a contradic- tion in terms," and it assuredly shows an utterly inadequate sense of an art to which metrical form is as essential as the body to our human life. One answer to the question, What is a great poet P is that he must be a consummate master of verse. Whether this alone will suffice to constitute greatness is, of course, another matter. Mr. Swinburne has said that imagination and harmony, when the qualities are perceptible in the highest degree, suffice to constitute the highest poetry, " though they should be unaccompanied and unsupported by any other great quality whatever." This judgment would place Coleridge and Shelley among the noblest poets of all time; and Mr. Gosse, in saying that the latter "belongs to ,9 Questions at fem. By Edmund Gone. London: Heinemann. 1893. Europe—to the world," appears to agree with Mr. Swinburne. The enchanting music of these singers is beyond all praise ; but the few poets who hold an undisputed supremacy are far from being wholly dependent on the indispensable gifts of harmony and imagination. What Shelley might have become, who can say P It must be always remembered that this great lyric poet was not thirty when he died. " Shelley," said Words- worth, "is one of the best artists of us all—I mean in work- manship of style ; " and Mr. Gosse says very truly that, unlike the Ossians and Walt Whitmans, who feel yet cannot control their feelings, Shelley's poetry, "with all his modernity, his revolutionary instinct, his disdain of the unessential, is of the highest and moat classic technical perfection." The mention of Walt Whitman reminds us that in another essay the author writes of his bastard jargon as a return to sheer barbarism—a statement not likely to be palatable to the extravagant admirers of the American poet.
The question, Is Verse in Danger F seems to us an idle one. There have been always periods of poetical decline—times when it has seemed as if the sources of inspiration were dried up. But the poet has come at last and silenced the pro- phetic voices which announced the decadence of his art. Mr. Gosse, however, thinks that he has found an additional stumbling-block to the recognition of new poets.
" The activity of the dead is now paramount, and threatens to
paralyse original writing altogether E very poetic writer of any age precedent to our own has now a chance of popularity—often a very much better chance than he possessed during his own life- time. Scarcely a poet, from Chaucer downwards, remains inedited. The imitative lyrist who, in a paroxysm of inspiration, wrote one good sonnet under the sway of James I., but was never recognised as a poet even by his friends, rejoices now in a portly quarto, and lives for the first time. The order of nature is reversed, and those who were only ghosts in the seventeenth century come back to us clothed in literary vitality. In the great throng of resuscitated souls, all of whom have forfeited their copyright, how is the modern poet to exist " If we may judge from the circulation of poetry in free libraries, neither contemporary poets, nor the poets who have passed into classics, are much read by the public. The noblest of all arts has ever yielded a delight unfelt by the general reader. He prefers the latest novel or the most popular magazine. To study poets in order to pass examinations is to misread them in higher respects, a subject on which Mr. Gosse discourses pleasantly ; but apart from this perfunctory and limited study of our poetical classics, few of them have a sufficiently modern charm to block the way against living poets. It is to be feared that neither Spenser nor Milton, Chaucer nor Dryden, have a current circulation at all approaching to that enjoyed by Mr. Lewis Morris. The same remark holds good with regard to novels, and we question Mr. Geese's assertion that a young novelist has no living com- petitor so dangerous to him as Dickens and Thackeray are. The author's ugly word " modernity " accounts for the success of several living writers of fiction, whose stories are infinitely inferior to many that have been rendered of less immediate popularity by time. The last new novel is an announcement against which the master-spirits of fiction compete in vain, and it would be interesting to compare the number of Jane Austen's readers with the readers who find their favourite element in Edna Lyall. Tales like Robert Elsnzere and David Grieve have the advantage of appealing to a section of the public that is content to have some of the deepest problems of life settled or discussed in fiction; but no one blessed with critical sagacity would dream of placing these works on a level with the finest of English novels. Famous for their little day, it must inevitably prove a short one ; but while it lasts the novels which belong to permanent literature will lag far behind in the race of popularity. We agree with Mr. Gosse that the influence of democracy on literature worthy of the name is so slight as to be scarcely perceptible, but he points out the danger of quantity swamping quality when the -demands of the average reader are made from a lower level than formerly. " As a result of democracy," he writes, " what is still looked upon as the field of literature has been invaded by camp-followers of every kind, so active and so numerous that they threaten to oust the soldiery themselves,— persona in every variety of costume, from Court clothes to rags, but agree- ing only in this, that they are not dressed as soldiers of literature. These amateurs and specialists, these writers of books that are not books, and essays that are not essays, are peculiarly the product of a democratic age."
The multiplication of periodic a!is of a popular but non-literary class results in the production of a herd of journalists and story- tellers whose sole aim is to please in order that they may live. "The money standard," says Mr. Gosse, " tends to become the standard of merit. At a recent public meeting, while one of the most distinguished of living technical writers was speaking of the literary profession, one of those purveyors of tenth-rate fiction who supply stories, as they might supply vegetables, to a regular market, was heard to say with scorn,—" Call him an author P" "Why, yes ! " his neighbour replied; " don't you know he has written so and so, and so and so F" "Well," said the other, "I should like to know what his sales are before I allowed he was an author." Mr. Gosse adds that it would be highly inopportune to call for the return of the bona-fide sales of authors who are not novelists, as it would probably be found " that many of those who are only next to the highest in public esteem do not receive more than the barest pittance from their writings." He is right, we think, in saying that, apart from fiction, there were higher prizes for literature in the last century than in ours. No translator of Homer or of any other famous poet in our day could hope to be paid a fifth-part of the sum realised by Pope. Hawkesworth, who prepared Captain Cook's first voyage for the press, and did it badly, gained £6,000 for his labour ; Young received £3,000 for his Satires ; and Prior £4,000 for the publication of his poems in folio.
Mr. Gosse gives a list of thirteen poets, with some misgiving as to Gray's claim, who are " the manifest immortals of our British Parnassus," and of these five belong to the present century. Mr. Swinburne, however, would omit Byron from the list, and a biographer of Byron would omit Shelley, whom he considered more of a metaphysician than a poet. So, too, would a critic of a far higher order than Galt, for our readers will re- call Matthew Arnold's astounding opinion that Shelley's letters will survive his poetry; and they may remember also the equally amazing statement of Sir Henry Taylor that, after spending a morning in reading Burns, he had found nothing in that poet worthy to live for twenty years. Moreover, two great poets on the list, Wordsworth and Coleridge, have questioned the claim of Pope, who is also one of Mr. Gosse's "immortals."
The essayist's plea on behalf of the twelve can, we think, be amply justified ; but probably Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton, are the only poets whose rank is bayou!" ali contention and discussion. Yet there are scores of Englishmen and Englishwomen, supposed to be well educated, who have never read the twenty-four books of the Paerie Qoteene, or the twelve books of Paradise Lost. Even Shakespeare, it is to be feared, is better known upon the stage than in the closet. Whether Scott is a great poet shall not be discussed here, for our space is limited ; but Mr. Gosse is, we think, unjust in writing of his long narrative poems as " Waverley novels told in easy ambling verse, and to a great measure spoiled by such telling," since all that is noblest in them—and how much there is that is noble ?—could not have been written without the inspiration that demands verse for its organ. What would the vigorous life of the Lay be in prose, or the sixth canto of Marmion, or the splendid battle-scene in the Lady of Ole Lake ?
It is always with regret that one differs from a critic so sympathetic, and so competent, as Mr. Gosse. The book is one to be read, talked about, and criticised, and whatever difference of opinion may exist on the questions under discussion, the reader cannot feel otherwise than grateful to the author for the agreeable way in which he has brought them before him.
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